Field of the Art
The disclosure relates to the field of wireless networking, and more particularly to the field of media distribution and rendering on spatially extended wireless networks.
Discussion of the State of the Art
Currently, there is a trend towards use of mobile devices such as multimedia players, smartphones, tablet computers, or other various mobile electronic devices for media streaming applications. These devices generally have the ability to receive streaming media content over wireless networks and to send one or more channels of the media content to wireless playback devices (such as speakers, stereo receivers, or televisions). Unfortunately, the useful range of current wireless network topologies is spatially limited, drastically curtailing or even precluding playback of media over extended distances—for instance on college campuses, corporate campuses, in towns, cities or parts of cities, or within school buildings, to list a few of many possible examples.
Wireless range may be substantially affected by many issues. Among these are interference from objects, multipath interference, antenna quality of sending and receiving devices, channel congestion, and device processing delays (since streaming media is often only one among several processes demanding processing resources of mobile devices at any given time. As a result, theoretical maximum ranges of various standardized wireless networking protocols are only reached under ideal circumstances, and true effective ranges are typically about half of theoretical maximum ranges. In some cases, maximum data throughput is only achieved at extremely close ranges of about 25 feet. At the outer limits of a device's effective range, data throughput often decreases to around 1 Mbps before it drops out altogether. The reason is that wireless devices dynamically negotiate the top speed at which they can communicate without dropping too many data packets.
What is needed, is a system to significantly extend the spatial range of wireless networks such that playback of media content can encompass large spaces such as campuses, buildings, and even cities, while still providing for synchronous media rendering by many media rendering devices across such spatially extended wireless networks.